Erik Wilkins has been carrying around a wooden box engraved with his name. It means he was chosen to become a chief petty officer, a big deal in the U.S. Navy where the unofficial motto is, ‘Chiefs run the Navy.’

Wilkins, 29, doesn’t display that swagger — yet. A 6-foot-4 farm boy from a small Idaho town, he joined the Navy at age 17 to see the world and, he acknowledges, because the Air Force didn’t like his test scores.

He became a boatswain’s mate, one of the Navy’s oldest jobs. It involves painting and repainting the ship, hauling lines and other physical work on the deck. Wilkins chose it because he wanted to see the sun, after months of being assigned to the engine room.

“Growing up in a farm area, I was used to working with my hands, getting down and getting dirty. So I was more than happy, and I wanted to see daylight,” Wilkins said.

Now he helps to run a 30-sailor department on the frigate Vandegrift. The job has changed in his 12 years, much like the rest of the world. Hello technology and automation. Goodbye traditional jobs and the idea of having as many sailors as you need — even padding in case of crisis.

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“They’ve cut the (work shifts) down, but it also cut the manpower to the ship. Most of these smaller ships I’m used to, they are used to being loaded out with 30 deck seamen to get the job done. The new destroyers now, you have seven deck seamen,” Wilkins said.

“Now with the smaller manpower, we have to say, 'Hey, we need help, we need bodies from different departments.’ So training is becoming more of a big factor now.”

His frigate, too, is approaching its sunset. The Navy will eventually replace it with the highly automated littoral combat ship.

“I see that’s going to be more of a challenge in the future. Going to a different ship, you can’t just run the deck now. You’re going to be helping in this department, that department — so just learning everything.”

It means cracking the books, the technical manuals. And some extra stress.

“To me, maybe families might take a little toll. Because they are like, ‘You aren’t spending time with us,’ ” he said.

Wilkins has already missed half of his 2-year-old daughter’s life. When the Vandegrift returned from deployment in November, the toddler looked at this tall man, her father, and didn’t know him.

“It was kind of like a heartbreak. You want to hold your daughter, and she wanted nothing to do with me,” he said.

Still, he’s made it pretty far from Weiser, Idaho, population 4,000.

His favorite stops: the Seychelles islands off Africa, Palau in Micronesia, Tokyo Disneyland.

“I’ve done the world tour,” Wilkins said, with just a hint of swagger.